![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
In all the hullabaloo of my last post, I forgot a major point:
The glass harmonica.
In Harvard Square, we found a woman playing this bemusing instrument, and I took a turn (so to speak) at the crank while she played a lovely "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." The thing sounds a little like an organ, a little like a musical saw, and of course, a little like when you run your finger around the rim of a wineglass.
She played it by having someone turn the crank, then wetting her fingers and touching them along the gold-leaf edges of each glass bleb in the structure, each of which would make a different note.
This picture looks the most like the one I saw. I seriously could not stop grinning at this thing.
Apparently, this guy can't, either.
My favorite thing about this instrument, though, is its bizarre history and how it languished into obscurity:
A dictionary of music from the period warned that the instrument's "celestial softness" could cause spasms. Cases of Armonica-induced melancholia began making the medical rounds. Several Armonica performers (including one of the most celebrated players, Marianne Davies) were hospitalized for nervous disorders. Soon, the Armonica was being blamed on premature births, causing convulsions in farm animals, domestic squabbles, madness and death. When a child died during an Armonica concert in Germany, the instrument was banned there.
The woman's notes near the glass harmonica that we saw also included "raising the dead" as one of the feared results of the playing of this strange instrument. Damn! Why'd they ban it? Zombie glass harmonica players, come on!
The glass harmonica.
In Harvard Square, we found a woman playing this bemusing instrument, and I took a turn (so to speak) at the crank while she played a lovely "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." The thing sounds a little like an organ, a little like a musical saw, and of course, a little like when you run your finger around the rim of a wineglass.
She played it by having someone turn the crank, then wetting her fingers and touching them along the gold-leaf edges of each glass bleb in the structure, each of which would make a different note.
This picture looks the most like the one I saw. I seriously could not stop grinning at this thing.
Apparently, this guy can't, either.
My favorite thing about this instrument, though, is its bizarre history and how it languished into obscurity:
A dictionary of music from the period warned that the instrument's "celestial softness" could cause spasms. Cases of Armonica-induced melancholia began making the medical rounds. Several Armonica performers (including one of the most celebrated players, Marianne Davies) were hospitalized for nervous disorders. Soon, the Armonica was being blamed on premature births, causing convulsions in farm animals, domestic squabbles, madness and death. When a child died during an Armonica concert in Germany, the instrument was banned there.
The woman's notes near the glass harmonica that we saw also included "raising the dead" as one of the feared results of the playing of this strange instrument. Damn! Why'd they ban it? Zombie glass harmonica players, come on!
